Final Nail in Rove Story Coffin

Jul 15, 2005

RUSH: So last night, as always, I’m sitting at home and I’m working. I’m preparing for this program and I’m bothering nobody because I’m alone. Although I do know I bother people even when they’re not around. (Laughter) But, all of a sudden, there started to be in my e-mail this official buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz, and it was coming from the beltway, coming from inside the beltway in our nation’s capital. Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz. Apparently the New York Times had an exclusive coming in today’s paper. Normally, you can read tomorrow’s paper, the New York Times website, starting at about — well, depending — sometimes, if your RSS feeder is up to snuff, you get some of tomorrow’s stories in the New York Times at 10:00 the night before. But they had embargoed this one until 11:30. Oh, they were hyping it. They were really keeping the buzz. And the buzz was, “Oh, my gosh, they’re going to nail Rove!” And the buzz then started, “No, no, no. This is going to exonerate Rove.” So I patiently waited, did all I could to get an advance copy of it. And, lo and behold, the bottom line is that Karl Rove is not the source of anything. It was a journalist who told him of Valerie Plame’s identity and where she worked and so forth. White House senior advisor Karl Rove indirectly confirmed — this is the Washington Post version of the New York Times story, which I thought would be a unique way of looking at this. “White House senior adviser Karl Rove indirectly confirmed the CIA affiliation of an administration critic’s wife for Robert D. Novak the week before the columnist named her and revealed her position, a lawyer involved in the case.” This is apparently a lawyer who knows what the testimony at the grand jury has been, called the New York Times. Now, you can speculate who the lawyer is all day long, the list is going to be pretty small of possibilities here. “The lawyer, who has knowledge of the conversations between Rove and prosecutors, said President Bush’s deputy chief of staff has told investigators that he first learned about the operative from a journalist and that he later learned her name from Novak.” He doesn’t remember who the journalist was who first told him that Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA. “The New York Times reported the conversation between Rove and Novak in its Friday editions. The lawyer confirmed that account and elaborated on it. The account suggests that Rove could not have been Novak’s original source but may have been a secondary source.” I can tell you how this works because I know reporters. I know reporters and I know liberals like every square inch of my glorious naked body. So Novak has heard about this. He’s heard that Valerie Plame is her name and that she’s at the CIA. So he calls Rove. And he says, “You know, this is going around and this is going around and it’s going around. What do you think of this?” And he’s just looking for some sort of confirmation from somewhere. And Rove says, “Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard that too.” Rove, by the way, never called anybody on any of this. Rove only received phone calls. And ostensibly, in both cases, both Novak and Matthew Cooper, the phone calls that they placed to Rove were about other issues. Cooper wanted to talk about welfare reform and Novak wanted to talk about something else. At least that was their cover. But it is clear that Novak informed and confirmed for Rove — and when Rove shot back, “Yeah, that’s what I’ve heard too.” Novak felt that he had enough confirmation to go with this. But what this does here, folks — the story’s over. I mean the story is over. I mean we can play the audio sound bites from yesterday, which I might do. We could play Joe Wilson. We’ve got that pathetic press conference. Do you know the networks bumped out of that Wilson-Schumer press conference in something like four minutes? It was so uninteresting and boring. And I’ll tell you, you know, Schumer’s not helping the Democrats at all folks. He doesn’t play well outside of New York. In New York, he may play okay, but to the country, who is this Schumer guy and why is he telling us all of this? And why, if Schumer is so concerned that Rove’s security clearance be pulled, where was Schumer when Jay Rockefeller, Ron Wyden and one other senator divulged this secret spy plane project that was being developed?

Nobody was concerned about that. Nobody was concerned their security clearance be pulled. They did this under the guise that we didn’t need to waste this kind of money on this super-secret project. So there’s hypocrisy all over the place and I think what’s happened here is exactly what I told you was going to happen. I think, ladies and gentlemen, that what has happened here is that the Democrats have pushed too far too fast without any evidence whatsoever to support their claims. They did this because of their utter desperation, which is a product of their hate and their seething rage. You’ve got Schumer killing them PR-wise outside of New York City. He’s the worst possible point man for them on this. And I’d like to see a poll on what the American people think of Joe Wilson. I want to say a poll of what the American people think of Chuck Schumer. I can predict we’re going to get polls on what they think of Rove and Bush and all this. But if the Democrats are so damned certain of Rove’s criminal guilt, why are they demanding more investigations? Why are they calling for his clearance to be pulled? Why are they calling for his resignation? Why can’t they wait for the prosecutor to speak? Because it’s not about whether Rove did anything legal or not. It’s all about strategy which is simply getting rid of enemies with all this mudslinging. You hopefully throw enough mud on the wall and some of it’s going to stick and just cloud up all the issues and divert people’s attention from other things like Dick Durbin and the war and the bombs that went off in London. I mean, anytime terrorists strike, it’s bad news for the Democrats because it points out how literally, absolutely weak they are and how we cannot count on them for the nation’s security, and they’ve hated Rove ever since they’ve known Rove. He’s beaten them from Texas to Florida to Washington, and so, you know, this is so much a modus operandi for them, a standard operating procedure, that they just are so sure when they aim their crosshairs at somebody. And their experience is — you have to understand this now — back 30, 40 years ago, if you ended up in the lib or lib media crosshairs you were dead. They could get you. But not today, folks. Those days are over and they still don’t realize it. They can aim their crosshairs on people but it doesn’t mean they’re going to get away with it automatically anymore. I think they’ve really overstepped now because it is clear that Rove is not the source for this, and it’s clear that Rove has nothing to do with why Judith Miller is in jail, and I think, as I said yesterday, all roads lead to Joe Wilson. This guy’s out there talking to any reporter that will call him on him. In fact, Joe Wilson’s seeking out reporters. They’re not even calling him. Joe Wilson’s all over the place and he can’t tell the truth. He’s lying here, lying there, has lied in a number of places. Cliff May, a former reporter for the New York Times now runs a think tank of sorts and contributes to National Review Online. He has an interesting theory today. He said that the actual culprit here, the person responsible for all this knowledge about his wife is him, Joe Wilson, via an interview with David Corn of the Nation. A year ago David Corn was talking to Wilson and asking him questions. And Wilson’s answering in hypotheticals. He says, (paraphrasing) “Well, let’s say, for example, that my wife was a covert agent or let’s say that my wife was a secret agent. Well, what would happen in that case?” “Well, you’re saying she was?” “Oh, no, no, no. I’m not saying that. But let’s say she was…”And then he said, “Let’s say she wasn’t. If she wasn’t a covert agent and this news came out about her, what would happen then?” Well, Cliff May, putting on his New York Times reporter’s cap, says, “That is a common reporter technique, and a source technique, that Wilson was actually outing his wife without saying so. By setting up that hypothetical that Corn could then run with and take it and blame it back on Novak or somebody else.” So all roads lead to Joe Wilson in this, and probably his wife somewhere along the way. I mean, this woman is probably not clean and pure as the wind-drive snow either. We have this image of her as practically virginal, great heroine and someone has come along and corrupted her and ruined her life, and that isn’t true either. And then you’ve got Judith Miller in jail, and Rove said it’s a journalist that first told him about all this and he doesn’t remember who. And the New York Times has been leading the liberal charge for this scalp of Karl Rove. So much so they leave their reporter in jail because they — and even though there’s a waiver that’s been granted, she won’t come forward and identify her source. It’s got to be because it’s too embarrassing to her and to the New York Times. So regardless, typical Democrat and liberal media overstepping eagerness born of seething rage and hatred. Folks, it’s like I’ve always said, the way the libs are today, and it’s kind of comical, you put a sack of excrement out there in front of them, and they’re going to step in it. You can even hide the sack and they will find it and they will step in it. And then they stink everything up like they’ve done here all week.BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I want to go to the audio sound bites, ladies and gentlemen, just a few, just on this Karl Rove and Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson business. Just to substantiate, and again, this is because there’s some libs in the audience. And like I said yesterday, I could announce on this program that the sun rises in the east, that it sets in the west, and when there are no clouds in the sky, the sky is blue, and the liberals would accuse me of lying. So I will never have credibility with this. I can sit here and say the Rove case is blown sky high, and that all signs, all roads lead to Wilson and they’re not going to believe it. Let’s go to the audio Sunday bites and just add to this. Yesterday on CNN, this guy, Bruce Sanford, who is a First Amendment attorney, and he also was a consultant on this law that Rove was said to have violated, he was a guest on CNN, and I have two sound bites from his appearance. The first question to him was: We’ve heard a lot about the act but let’s look at it, actually read a section from it. “Knowing that the information disclosed so the identity of covert agent and that the US is taking affirmative measure to conceal such covert agents’ intelligence relationship to the US. In other words, what you’re saying, the reason why there’s no evidence of criminal wrongdoing is because Karl Rove didn’t do anything wrong because he didn’t know that Plame was covert?”SANFORD: That’s pretty clear from the notes, the e-mails that TIME magazine released to the grand jury, that Karl Rove said that Wilson’s wife — he didn’t even use her name, but Wilson’s wife, quote, apparently works, unquote, at the CIA. It seems to me there’s a substantial question whether she qualifies as the kind of covert agent that was envisioned by the act. They’re very tight requirements for that and there’s a substantial doubt whether the agency was taking the kind of affirmative measures to conceal her identity that the act talks about. RUSH: And he addresses that fact in this next bite. The question is: Well, breaking the law, partisan politics, do you think Valerie Plame is now damaged goods?SANFORD: It is worth remembering that when Robert Novak, the columnist, disclosed her identity in his column, he had called the CIA to tell them he was going to do that, and they didn’t stop him. They did not do what the CIA normally does in that situation if they want to protect or continue to protect somebody’s identity. They didn’t call his syndicate. They didn’t scream at him and say you’re going to endanger danger her life or endanger her career, that sort of thing. They just sort of shrugged and said well, I guess she won’t be getting any more overseas assignments. I don’t think that’s the kind of affirmative measures that the agency needs to be taking in order to invoke this statute.RUSH: It’s been kind of funny to see how hard the media has been taking all these revelations. I was watching CNN this morning and Peter King, who is just out there and he is rallying the Republicans to fire back at all of this and he’s calling a spade and a spade and he was on with Soledad O’Brien on CNN this morning and you could see that Soledad was just — I mean they all are convinced Rove’s a criminal, Rove’s a jerk, Rove’s a liar, Rove’s got to go. And yet all the evidence that is utterly exculpatory, especially this morning, and all of the evidence, you can just see it disappoints these people because they thought, because they’re premature and they overstepped and they went too fast, they thought they had Rove. This last bite here, I mean Novak called the CIA and said, hey, I’m running this story. They didn’t ask him to do anything. Didn’t ask him to not do it, didn’t ask him to hold it, anything of the sort. END TRANSCRIPT